IMPORTANT: If Build 35 fails to start on your machine then please check this thread. Steam may have failed to install the required VC Redist 2015 file.

Build 35 is here, and has a huge changelist. You can view it in its entirety here. The highlights are, however, listed below.

If you wish to report bugs then please use our bug tracker. If you have more complex needs please visit our Support forum.

We anticipate balance and loot tweaks that will be made from player feedback in the coming days. Build 35 will be released on non-Steam platforms after the initial patching process has ended.

Work on other systems such as anims/combat/clothing continues, but the large amount of additions already in the beta test of Build 35 made it sensible to release before the holiday season - this release is separate to the animation branch and will not impact on its arrival time. We anticipate that multi-tile object movement will go into a brief period of public testing next week before being merged into the main build.

Huge thanks go out to our friends at General Arcade for working on the VOIP aspect of this build.

Many thanks. Enjoy!


ROSEWOOD, MARCH POINT AND ROSEWOOD PRISON COMPLEX

• Visit the new towns of Rosewood and March Point, the farmland in-between and the vast Rosewood prison complex.
• New buildings include court house, fire station, shopping areas, new police station, community centre, residential areas and military apartment buildings.
• New profession-based player spawn locations in and around the town of Rosewood
• New map tiles, furniture, decoration and building styles

LOCATION-BASED VOIP IN MP

• Lets you talk directly to your co-op friends, and survivors you meet on MP servers.
• Player voices can be heard when in ‘audible’ distance from other characters on the map.
• VOIP available in 'Press to Talk', 'Voice Activated' and 'Listen Only' flavours, and accessed in the Options menu.

NEW CONSTRUCTION

• Metalwork crafting - weld metal sheets to create metal barricades, or put bars in windows
• Metalwork profession and skills.
• Multiple stage building to combine metalwork and carpentry skills.
• Building now utilises items from inside bags carried by survivor.
• Objects on the map can now be deconstructed to obtain materials if player has correct tools and skills.

MP FACTIONS

• Safehouse UI to claim buildings, change ownership and see connected players
• Formable factions, with a visible four character tag above survivors - should they choose to show it.
• Melee PvP disabled between faction-members

WILDERNESS MAP IMPROVEMENTS

• ‘Tree noise’ to automatically improve/randomise wilderness areas of the map.
• Big trees in forested areas.

RADIO/TV COMMUNITY TRANSLATIONS

• Community Translations of Radio/TV narrative content in French, Polish, Spanish, Russian and Turkish.
• Radio/TV content and timelines now operate in-line with narrative tool WordZed, which has been released to the community.

FOOD AND NUTRITION REVAMP

• Realistic nutritional values that see your character impacted by what he/she eats and their physical activity.
• Visible nutritional information on food items with labels
• Added associated professions and traits

NEW MP ADMIN FRAMEWORK

• Hugely improved player activity log system
• Admin panel to goven players, safehouses etc
• TransactionID savescumming prevention update
• Warning point system
• Admin abilities to check/modify player stats: add/remove XP, change displayed name, heal etc
• Server access level ranks for admin staff
• Ability for admin to easily create non-PvP zones on the map
• Player names decoupled from usernames

SLEEPING REVAMP

• Zombies more attracted to house lighting at night.
• Night Events. Zombie activity can result in safehouse incursions should it be left unsecured while sleeping.
• Alarm clocks and watch alarms are now used to wake up survivors. Tired survivors might wake up late without them.
• Character will struggle to sleep when in pain, so should take painkillers or sleeping pills.
• Anxious characters might wake up early, or even in the middle of the night.
• Quality of sleep now impacted by where player chooses to rest

COMMUNITY REQUEST SPLURGE

• Composting - rotting food can be placed in a crafted composter to create crop fertilizer
• 'Container' items weight reduces the more they are used (water bottles, gas cans etc.) and can be combined.
• Pots and bowls fill with water in rain
• Zombies can tear down sheet ropes.
• Wet items dry over time.
• More realistic tea and coffee making (!)
• Paint all interior walls and wooden furniture
• First aid equipment automatically used by First Aid panel
• Smoker trait
• Various other things
• Selected loot container now highlighted

UPDATED UI

• 'Transfer All' button when looting
• New tutorials and updated tooltips
• Ability to 'favourite' items to highlight them and prevent them from being dropped
• 'Windows Explorer' Inventory improvements. Shift selects a sequence of items, Ctrl lets you selected different individual items.

OTHER STUFF

• New Skill books (First Aid, Metalwork)
• New world-filler visuals
• Park Ranger and Lumberjack walk faster through forest
• General balance to loot locations, traits, fall damage, fatigue, recipe requirements, weights, fatigue, endurance, happiness, poisoning, generator fuel usage and XP.
• Loads and loads of bug fixes

IMPORTANT: If Build 35 fails to start on your machine then please check this thread. Steam may have failed to install the required VC Redist 2015 file.

Build 35 is here, and has a huge changelist. You can view it in its entirety here. The highlights are, however, listed below.

If you wish to report bugs then please use our bug tracker. If you have more complex needs please visit our Support forum.

We anticipate balance and loot tweaks that will be made from player feedback in the coming days. Build 35 will be released on non-Steam platforms after the initial patching process has ended.

Work on other systems such as anims/combat/clothing continues, but the large amount of additions already in the beta test of Build 35 made it sensible to release before the holiday season - this release is separate to the animation branch and will not impact on its arrival time. We anticipate that multi-tile object movement will go into a brief period of public testing next week before being merged into the main build.

Huge thanks go out to our friends at General Arcade for working on the VOIP aspect of this build.

Many thanks. Enjoy!


ROSEWOOD, MARCH POINT AND ROSEWOOD PRISON COMPLEX

• Visit the new towns of Rosewood and March Point, the farmland in-between and the vast Rosewood prison complex.
• New buildings include court house, fire station, shopping areas, new police station, community centre, residential areas and military apartment buildings.
• New profession-based player spawn locations in and around the town of Rosewood
• New map tiles, furniture, decoration and building styles

LOCATION-BASED VOIP IN MP

• Lets you talk directly to your co-op friends, and survivors you meet on MP servers.
• Player voices can be heard when in ‘audible’ distance from other characters on the map.
• VOIP available in 'Press to Talk', 'Voice Activated' and 'Listen Only' flavours, and accessed in the Options menu.

NEW CONSTRUCTION

• Metalwork crafting - weld metal sheets to create metal barricades, or put bars in windows
• Metalwork profession and skills.
• Multiple stage building to combine metalwork and carpentry skills.
• Building now utilises items from inside bags carried by survivor.
• Objects on the map can now be deconstructed to obtain materials if player has correct tools and skills.

MP FACTIONS

• Safehouse UI to claim buildings, change ownership and see connected players
• Formable factions, with a visible four character tag above survivors - should they choose to show it.
• Melee PvP disabled between faction-members

WILDERNESS MAP IMPROVEMENTS

• ‘Tree noise’ to automatically improve/randomise wilderness areas of the map.
• Big trees in forested areas.

RADIO/TV COMMUNITY TRANSLATIONS

• Community Translations of Radio/TV narrative content in French, Polish, Spanish, Russian and Turkish.
• Radio/TV content and timelines now operate in-line with narrative tool WordZed, which has been released to the community.

FOOD AND NUTRITION REVAMP

• Realistic nutritional values that see your character impacted by what he/she eats and their physical activity.
• Visible nutritional information on food items with labels
• Added associated professions and traits

NEW MP ADMIN FRAMEWORK

• Hugely improved player activity log system
• Admin panel to goven players, safehouses etc
• TransactionID savescumming prevention update
• Warning point system
• Admin abilities to check/modify player stats: add/remove XP, change displayed name, heal etc
• Server access level ranks for admin staff
• Ability for admin to easily create non-PvP zones on the map
• Player names decoupled from usernames

SLEEPING REVAMP

• Zombies more attracted to house lighting at night.
• Night Events. Zombie activity can result in safehouse incursions should it be left unsecured while sleeping.
• Alarm clocks and watch alarms are now used to wake up survivors. Tired survivors might wake up late without them.
• Character will struggle to sleep when in pain, so should take painkillers or sleeping pills.
• Anxious characters might wake up early, or even in the middle of the night.
• Quality of sleep now impacted by where player chooses to rest

COMMUNITY REQUEST SPLURGE

• Composting - rotting food can be placed in a crafted composter to create crop fertilizer
• 'Container' items weight reduces the more they are used (water bottles, gas cans etc.) and can be combined.
• Pots and bowls fill with water in rain
• Zombies can tear down sheet ropes.
• Wet items dry over time.
• More realistic tea and coffee making (!)
• Paint all interior walls and wooden furniture
• First aid equipment automatically used by First Aid panel
• Smoker trait
• Various other things
• Selected loot container now highlighted

UPDATED UI

• 'Transfer All' button when looting
• New tutorials and updated tooltips
• Ability to 'favourite' items to highlight them and prevent them from being dropped
• 'Windows Explorer' Inventory improvements. Shift selects a sequence of items, Ctrl lets you selected different individual items.

OTHER STUFF

• New Skill books (First Aid, Metalwork)
• New world-filler visuals
• Park Ranger and Lumberjack walk faster through forest
• General balance to loot locations, traits, fall damage, fatigue, recipe requirements, weights, fatigue, endurance, happiness, poisoning, generator fuel usage and XP.
• Loads and loads of bug fixes

Hey all, Mondoid again. Work on the anims/combat build continues, and we’re still tying the new system into Zomboid’s multiplayer contingent. The new state machine stuff is quite a major shift in the game code, and MP is used to dealing with the old version so the dev wheel’s still (still) turning on that front. Elsewhere meanwhile…


So last Thursday we had 172 lovely members of the community jumping on the current Build 35 test version together, and it was great: directional VOIP governed by player position on the map clearly brings a ton to MP – so hurrah!

To see if lightning can strike twice within our awesome survivor-base we will be having The Great Big Build 35 MP Megatest: Part II this week, again on Thursday evening (GMT). This will be an updated version of the game (released fairly imminently – details below) and focus more on Factions and new Admin features that were a little too bugged to get proper feedback on last week.

Thankfully people seemed to have plenty of fun, but as a stress test our community playdate did its job by flushing out plenty of bugs for us and our friends at General Arcade to stamp out. We had a few crashes during the run of play, some heavy lag on the (rare, but important) times when there are 15+ players in the same area, a few issues with some Bluetooth headsets and a few bits/bobs of levels balance. Oh, and Rosewood Prison was mysteriously zombie-free.

Nothing sinister though, so hopefully we can iron out these last creases before finally releasing what we currently have in the public IWBUMS beta test to the public. If you want to check out some footage from the Megatest than .exe’s stream can still be found here.




The current Build 35 IWBUMS beta is content locked, so this feature may well be left aside until a follow-on build unless Turbo can sweet-talk us into thinking otherwise, but Turbs has now finished off his movable item system so it’s extended to multi-sprite objects. It’s something our base-build fanatics have been asking for, so here’s a quick vid to show it off.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRzFy4VYW8c

You can now manoeuvre bigger furniture around, and also (with the correct tools) deconstruct larger objects into several smaller kits that will be able to fit inside your inventory – but will clearly be fairly heavy too. Many two tile items, like signs and paintings, will just fit into your inventory however. Turbo has also updated the movable item icons so they look like the actual object in question, rather than one for a generic category, and generally made the UI a nicer place to be as well. The ‘kit’ sprite will also get a Mash revamp too, as the ‘little box’ look could be improved.


That’s about it for this week, although as mentioned above we do have a new 35.23 beta build dropping tonight or tomorrow that will appear here. This contains some important longstanding fixes for modders, new farmsteads and farmland between Rosewood and March Ridge, the ability to choose different colours when painting containers (handy for colour-coding in MP safehouses), extra Faction and Admin teleport options, a ‘support ticketing’ system to let players to get in touch with server admins and expanded foraging/trapping zones.

This will, most likely, be the build that Thursday’s Megatest: II will run on. If you have any problems updating then please check out this thread, which outlines the VCRedist 2015 issue that some players are running into. Thanks everyone!

This week’s featured image from Gassy Taco over on Steam, who we assume is Blasted Taco of the TIS forum’s cousin or something.  The Block of Italicised Text would like to direct your attention to the PZ Wiki should you feel like editing or amending something, and the PZ Mailing List that can send blogs like this and patch notes direct to your mailbox. We also live on Twitter right here! Our Discord is now open for chat and hijinks too. A general overview of the content of PZ builds past, in testing and upcoming can now be found here.

Hey all, Mondoid again. Work on the anims/combat build continues, and we’re still tying the new system into Zomboid’s multiplayer contingent. The new state machine stuff is quite a major shift in the game code, and MP is used to dealing with the old version so the dev wheel’s still (still) turning on that front. Elsewhere meanwhile…


So last Thursday we had 172 lovely members of the community jumping on the current Build 35 test version together, and it was great: directional VOIP governed by player position on the map clearly brings a ton to MP – so hurrah!

To see if lightning can strike twice within our awesome survivor-base we will be having The Great Big Build 35 MP Megatest: Part II this week, again on Thursday evening (GMT). This will be an updated version of the game (released fairly imminently – details below) and focus more on Factions and new Admin features that were a little too bugged to get proper feedback on last week.

Thankfully people seemed to have plenty of fun, but as a stress test our community playdate did its job by flushing out plenty of bugs for us and our friends at General Arcade to stamp out. We had a few crashes during the run of play, some heavy lag on the (rare, but important) times when there are 15+ players in the same area, a few issues with some Bluetooth headsets and a few bits/bobs of levels balance. Oh, and Rosewood Prison was mysteriously zombie-free.

Nothing sinister though, so hopefully we can iron out these last creases before finally releasing what we currently have in the public IWBUMS beta test to the public. If you want to check out some footage from the Megatest than .exe’s stream can still be found here.




The current Build 35 IWBUMS beta is content locked, so this feature may well be left aside until a follow-on build unless Turbo can sweet-talk us into thinking otherwise, but Turbs has now finished off his movable item system so it’s extended to multi-sprite objects. It’s something our base-build fanatics have been asking for, so here’s a quick vid to show it off.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRzFy4VYW8c

You can now manoeuvre bigger furniture around, and also (with the correct tools) deconstruct larger objects into several smaller kits that will be able to fit inside your inventory – but will clearly be fairly heavy too. Many two tile items, like signs and paintings, will just fit into your inventory however. Turbo has also updated the movable item icons so they look like the actual object in question, rather than one for a generic category, and generally made the UI a nicer place to be as well. The ‘kit’ sprite will also get a Mash revamp too, as the ‘little box’ look could be improved.


That’s about it for this week, although as mentioned above we do have a new 35.23 beta build dropping tonight or tomorrow that will appear here. This contains some important longstanding fixes for modders, new farmsteads and farmland between Rosewood and March Ridge, the ability to choose different colours when painting containers (handy for colour-coding in MP safehouses), extra Faction and Admin teleport options, a ‘support ticketing’ system to let players to get in touch with server admins and expanded foraging/trapping zones.

This will, most likely, be the build that Thursday’s Megatest: II will run on. If you have any problems updating then please check out this thread, which outlines the VCRedist 2015 issue that some players are running into. Thanks everyone!

This week’s featured image from Gassy Taco over on Steam, who we assume is Blasted Taco of the TIS forum’s cousin or something.  The Block of Italicised Text would like to direct your attention to the PZ Wiki should you feel like editing or amending something, and the PZ Mailing List that can send blogs like this and patch notes direct to your mailbox. We also live on Twitter right here! Our Discord is now open for chat and hijinks too. A general overview of the content of PZ builds past, in testing and upcoming can now be found here.

 

Hey all, hope you’re good and that US folk enjoyed their thanks-giving.


As discussed last week, we’re currently polishing the current IWBUMS public beta build of PZ’s Build 35 to a point at which it’s at release quality – and we should be releasing a new test version mid-week. Overall there’s a bunch of new/updated features in 35 at the moment that feel ready to get out into the wider community. It seems daft to keep it all in IWBUMS beta, and anything additional put in will only add to the inevitable bug cascade for RJ after the public release.

To this end, we need to stress-test both the new VOIP functions and the full set of MP improvements like the extended Admin powers and Factions. So… if you’re a server admin, a habitual PZ player online or just someone with a spare evening who fancies some desperate survival: you are cordially invited to ‘The Great Big Build 35 IWBUMS MP Megatest’ at 5pm GMT this Thursday, 1st December.

This will carry on for as long as people want to play, and will have fun activities like clearing Rosewood Prison of the zed horde en-masse over VOIP, and a climactic Last Man Standing competition. There’ll also be PZ codes given out as prizes, and we’ll get a few devs and community people online too. (Just be warned that, by its very nature, this will be still be a test version so a few bumps in the road are to be expected.)

The details will be found here, and as always information on how to download the public beta build can be found here.


Work on recoding Stormy’s ‘reloading’ mod is now complete, and we’re now running through PZ’s MP side to make sure our online and co-op components are all correctly synced up with the new animation system.  Since it’s the animations themselves that now drive the states of survivor and zombie characters it could cause issues if they differ even slightly between servers and the clients talking to them. We need to make sure that all state changes (Bitten! Hit! Shot! Burnt! Bleached!) are synchronised, to keep the visuals and logic of the game consistent between clients no matter what precise animation frame you might be seeing yourself.

While we’re in there, meanwhile, we’re making a few improvements to make the overall system better suited for the weapon mods we’re hoping will be unleashed by the overall combat/anims/models update. As such we’re working on getting the swing, hit and reaction animations for the combat working from the easily accessed items.txt script files, instead of them being hard coded deep within the game files.

This will allow the new regime to play nicely with both modded weapons and items alike, and should allow plenty of cool new stuff to spring up on the Workshop.


Work on the new areas of the map (playable in the current IWBUMS beta) is continuing with a bit of life being added between the new towns of Rosewood and March Ridge in terms of farms, isolated homes, smaller roads and general rural buildings.

This will make the journey between the Rosewood spawn point and March Ridge a more varied and pleasant one, with a few more places to rest overnight. The following is a WIP image of that coming to fruition. Rosewood can be seen to the top of the image, and March Ridge at the bottom.




One extra thing we think we can sneak into Build 35, as bugs will fall on Turbo’s shoulders, is an update to the movable items system. Currently any furniture that’s larger than a tile can’t be picked up and carried – so with this we’re talking about items like beds, tables and arcade cabinets.

In the new system, however, players with the relevant tools and skills will be able to deconstruct these into specific (heavy) kit parts. These must then be carried to their eventual destination, most likely piece by piece. Some of this work has already been done code-wise, so it should go into the build fairly soon.


Looking forward to Build 36, in the next version we’ll be introducing specific characters you can spawn as – each with individual start locations, back-stories, inventories and characteristics. Our initial intent of this will be to make it less like people you’re playing as have just materialised five days into a full zombie apocalypse, but clearly will also fall neatly into line with our plans for survivor radio voices and other key features that we need for version 1.0.

With this in mind, then, seeing as we need a selection of new archetypes from all over Zomboid’s character creation it would be really handy to know what the favoured character build from our players is. In fact, this would just be good to know for us in general – as we don’t have any of the Big Brother telemetry systems that big publisher games have at their command!

As such, if you fancy helping us out, then please give us some examples of your favourite skill/trait/profession load-outs in the following thread. What doesn’t appear in peoples’ submissions will likely help us just as much as what does. Many thanks!

This week’s featured image from Muscular Beaver. The Block of Italicised Text would like to direct your attention to the PZ Wiki should you feel like editing or amending something, and the PZ Mailing List that can send blogs like this and patch notes direct to your mailbox. We also live on Twitter right here! Our Discord is now open for chat and hijinks too. A general overview of the content of PZ builds past, in testing and upcoming can now be found here. Oh and hey, if you think we’re half okay then there’s this Steam Game Award thing still happening. We haven’t got a hope in hell of getting anything, but still…

 

Hey all, hope you’re good and that US folk enjoyed their thanks-giving.


As discussed last week, we’re currently polishing the current IWBUMS public beta build of PZ’s Build 35 to a point at which it’s at release quality – and we should be releasing a new test version mid-week. Overall there’s a bunch of new/updated features in 35 at the moment that feel ready to get out into the wider community. It seems daft to keep it all in IWBUMS beta, and anything additional put in will only add to the inevitable bug cascade for RJ after the public release.

To this end, we need to stress-test both the new VOIP functions and the full set of MP improvements like the extended Admin powers and Factions. So… if you’re a server admin, a habitual PZ player online or just someone with a spare evening who fancies some desperate survival: you are cordially invited to ‘The Great Big Build 35 IWBUMS MP Megatest’ at 5pm GMT this Thursday, 1st December.

This will carry on for as long as people want to play, and will have fun activities like clearing Rosewood Prison of the zed horde en-masse over VOIP, and a climactic Last Man Standing competition. There’ll also be PZ codes given out as prizes, and we’ll get a few devs and community people online too. (Just be warned that, by its very nature, this will be still be a test version so a few bumps in the road are to be expected.)

The details will be found here, and as always information on how to download the public beta build can be found here.


Work on recoding Stormy’s ‘reloading’ mod is now complete, and we’re now running through PZ’s MP side to make sure our online and co-op components are all correctly synced up with the new animation system.  Since it’s the animations themselves that now drive the states of survivor and zombie characters it could cause issues if they differ even slightly between servers and the clients talking to them. We need to make sure that all state changes (Bitten! Hit! Shot! Burnt! Bleached!) are synchronised, to keep the visuals and logic of the game consistent between clients no matter what precise animation frame you might be seeing yourself.

While we’re in there, meanwhile, we’re making a few improvements to make the overall system better suited for the weapon mods we’re hoping will be unleashed by the overall combat/anims/models update. As such we’re working on getting the swing, hit and reaction animations for the combat working from the easily accessed items.txt script files, instead of them being hard coded deep within the game files.

This will allow the new regime to play nicely with both modded weapons and items alike, and should allow plenty of cool new stuff to spring up on the Workshop.


Work on the new areas of the map (playable in the current IWBUMS beta) is continuing with a bit of life being added between the new towns of Rosewood and March Ridge in terms of farms, isolated homes, smaller roads and general rural buildings.

This will make the journey between the Rosewood spawn point and March Ridge a more varied and pleasant one, with a few more places to rest overnight. The following is a WIP image of that coming to fruition. Rosewood can be seen to the top of the image, and March Ridge at the bottom.




One extra thing we think we can sneak into Build 35, as bugs will fall on Turbo’s shoulders, is an update to the movable items system. Currently any furniture that’s larger than a tile can’t be picked up and carried – so with this we’re talking about items like beds, tables and arcade cabinets.

In the new system, however, players with the relevant tools and skills will be able to deconstruct these into specific (heavy) kit parts. These must then be carried to their eventual destination, most likely piece by piece. Some of this work has already been done code-wise, so it should go into the build fairly soon.


Looking forward to Build 36, in the next version we’ll be introducing specific characters you can spawn as – each with individual start locations, back-stories, inventories and characteristics. Our initial intent of this will be to make it less like people you’re playing as have just materialised five days into a full zombie apocalypse, but clearly will also fall neatly into line with our plans for survivor radio voices and other key features that we need for version 1.0.

With this in mind, then, seeing as we need a selection of new archetypes from all over Zomboid’s character creation it would be really handy to know what the favoured character build from our players is. In fact, this would just be good to know for us in general – as we don’t have any of the Big Brother telemetry systems that big publisher games have at their command!

As such, if you fancy helping us out, then please give us some examples of your favourite skill/trait/profession load-outs in the following thread. What doesn’t appear in peoples’ submissions will likely help us just as much as what does. Many thanks!

This week’s featured image from Muscular Beaver. The Block of Italicised Text would like to direct your attention to the PZ Wiki should you feel like editing or amending something, and the PZ Mailing List that can send blogs like this and patch notes direct to your mailbox. We also live on Twitter right here! Our Discord is now open for chat and hijinks too. A general overview of the content of PZ builds past, in testing and upcoming can now be found here. Oh and hey, if you think we’re half okay then there’s this Steam Game Award thing still happening. We haven’t got a hope in hell of getting anything, but still…

‘Ello, here’s where we’re at:



Okay, so! Where we’re at is: we’ve filled in the yawning chasm that opened up before us in terms of getting the new game logic state machine system. So all the existing internal game messages to itself like (to choose three of a bazillion) ‘the zombie is attacking!’, ‘survivor health damaged!’ and ‘oh no, a bite!’ now work comfortably within the new animations. So, hurrah for that.

The vast majority of combat code is ported over, and right now we’re rewriting the lua bullet-reloading system that was so expertly contributed by Stormy in the early days. This relied heavily on the old animation system, and for purposes of finally getting anims out of the door we will probably concentrate on the standard reloading system for now, and leave the Advanced Reloading option for a later date.

After that we get it all running together, and then we spot any forgotten mechanics/states from PZ’s vast repertoire that appear during the gameplay. Then we fix them up (could be a big job, could be a small job) and a test version will finally (finally!) emerge. Finally.



We’re currently polishing the current IWBUMS public beta of Build 35 with the thinking that it’s got so much stuff in it at this point that we need to release it soon, or the mountain of bugs found by public testers in the full gamut of new/updated features will be too much for poor old RJ to handle.

To this end, then, a few of us have been running around the new areas of Rosewood and March Ridge and building a list of things that need quick tidying up in terms of game systems – while RJ has been ploughing through the bug tracker and fixing stuff that the community has been reporting. Mash, too, is still in and around the new areas updating the new map’s farmland areas.

We’ve just released IWBUMS public beta build 35.22 that (among other things) lets you see how many crafting recipes you still have to discover in each particular skill, reassigns cigarette and magazine loot distribution, fixes up some Factions issues, remedies some translation and UI woes and generally fix up bugs associated with new game systems.



Due for public release this week, to mappers and creators of general PZ paraphernalia, is CartoZed – a tool created by TurboTuTone to help the Zomboid team and our modders whenever we need a non-isometric ‘traditional’ map of what’s currently in-game to assign zed spawn maps, check locations and (in a build that lies beyond 35) maybe create a range of lootable in-game maps.

CartoZed can be used on any map (so the likes of Dreadwood, New Denver and Bedford Falls can also be put through it) and it can draw up top-down maps searching for whatever you fancy whether it’s the traditional road/rail map seen below, or a more diverse map that (for example) flags different items and locations on the map.



This map produced with different CartoZed settings, meanwhile, draws Muld in terms of the electrical devices: radios in blue, TVs in green and furnaces in red.



Seriously, have you seen the stuff MesCaLiN has been building in PZ? We’ve used images of his creations in Mondoid before, but please check out his full range of Spiffo playrooms, chess boards, space shuttles, ornamental gardens, art galleries and jewellery stashes. Amazing stuff.





A quick call-out to groups of friends playing our IWBUMS build. We need feedback on ease of use, voice quality, settings and the default ‘hearing distance’ between co-op players on the map. While you’re in there, let us know what you think of the current zed count in Rosewood, Rosewood Prison and March Ridge too. Cheers all!

This week’s featured image from MesCaLiN again, obv. The Block of Italicised Text would like to direct your attention to the PZ Wiki should you feel like editing or amending something, and the PZ Mailing List that can send blogs like this and patch notes direct to your mailbox. We also live on Twitter right here! Our Discord is now open for chat and hijinks too. A general overview of the content of PZ builds past, in testing and upcoming can now be found here.

‘Ello, here’s where we’re at:



Okay, so! Where we’re at is: we’ve filled in the yawning chasm that opened up before us in terms of getting the new game logic state machine system. So all the existing internal game messages to itself like (to choose three of a bazillion) ‘the zombie is attacking!’, ‘survivor health damaged!’ and ‘oh no, a bite!’ now work comfortably within the new animations. So, hurrah for that.

The vast majority of combat code is ported over, and right now we’re rewriting the lua bullet-reloading system that was so expertly contributed by Stormy in the early days. This relied heavily on the old animation system, and for purposes of finally getting anims out of the door we will probably concentrate on the standard reloading system for now, and leave the Advanced Reloading option for a later date.

After that we get it all running together, and then we spot any forgotten mechanics/states from PZ’s vast repertoire that appear during the gameplay. Then we fix them up (could be a big job, could be a small job) and a test version will finally (finally!) emerge. Finally.



We’re currently polishing the current IWBUMS public beta of Build 35 with the thinking that it’s got so much stuff in it at this point that we need to release it soon, or the mountain of bugs found by public testers in the full gamut of new/updated features will be too much for poor old RJ to handle.

To this end, then, a few of us have been running around the new areas of Rosewood and March Ridge and building a list of things that need quick tidying up in terms of game systems – while RJ has been ploughing through the bug tracker and fixing stuff that the community has been reporting. Mash, too, is still in and around the new areas updating the new map’s farmland areas.

We’ve just released IWBUMS public beta build 35.22 that (among other things) lets you see how many crafting recipes you still have to discover in each particular skill, reassigns cigarette and magazine loot distribution, fixes up some Factions issues, remedies some translation and UI woes and generally fix up bugs associated with new game systems.



Due for public release this week, to mappers and creators of general PZ paraphernalia, is CartoZed – a tool created by TurboTuTone to help the Zomboid team and our modders whenever we need a non-isometric ‘traditional’ map of what’s currently in-game to assign zed spawn maps, check locations and (in a build that lies beyond 35) maybe create a range of lootable in-game maps.

CartoZed can be used on any map (so the likes of Dreadwood, New Denver and Bedford Falls can also be put through it) and it can draw up top-down maps searching for whatever you fancy whether it’s the traditional road/rail map seen below, or a more diverse map that (for example) flags different items and locations on the map.



This map produced with different CartoZed settings, meanwhile, draws Muld in terms of the electrical devices: radios in blue, TVs in green and furnaces in red.



Seriously, have you seen the stuff MesCaLiN has been building in PZ? We’ve used images of his creations in Mondoid before, but please check out his full range of Spiffo playrooms, chess boards, space shuttles, ornamental gardens, art galleries and jewellery stashes. Amazing stuff.





A quick call-out to groups of friends playing our IWBUMS build. We need feedback on ease of use, voice quality, settings and the default ‘hearing distance’ between co-op players on the map. While you’re in there, let us know what you think of the current zed count in Rosewood, Rosewood Prison and March Ridge too. Cheers all!

This week’s featured image from MesCaLiN again, obv. The Block of Italicised Text would like to direct your attention to the PZ Wiki should you feel like editing or amending something, and the PZ Mailing List that can send blogs like this and patch notes direct to your mailbox. We also live on Twitter right here! Our Discord is now open for chat and hijinks too. A general overview of the content of PZ builds past, in testing and upcoming can now be found here.

We have just released a new update to our public IWBUMS beta channel (details of how to access found here) with some cool new stuff. The build is 35.21, and the primary items it contains run as follows:

 



Rosewood now has a player spawn option, meaning that you can check out the prison, courthouse and the like without a hike. The military residential area of March Point meanwhile, placed between Muld and Rosewood, can currently only be reached on foot. (This might change depending on the feedback we get from this test build.)

As a part of this update there are various fixes to the map in the previous version, more applicable loot to be found in new buildings like the fire station, expanded foraging zones and also an updated ‘zombie spawn’ map that looks a little like this. Bottom right you’ll see the existing Muld zombie spawn, then to the lift is March Ridge and up at the top is Rosewood. The brighter the white, the heavier the zed presence.



We especially need feedback on difficulty in terms of the heightened zombie numbers for these areas, and of course any and all map bugs to be reported in the PZ bug tracker. We are aware that Rosewood has been spelt ‘Roosewood’ in the spawn selection screen. This will be addressed in an upcoming build, and has resulted in a Frenchman apologising profusely through the medium of Skype emoticon.



This feature allows you to talk to your co-op friends and survivors you meet on MP servers. It’s not a general overall PZ chat channel, but instead allows survivors to communicate when they’re in ‘audible’ distance from each other on the map itself. We’re hoping that it will add some great new dynamics to the game when played with friends, and enemies.

To enable this venture into the options menu, then choose whether you want the system to broadcast when it automatically hears your dulcet tones – or through the press of a button (default: alt). Our thanks to General Arcade for all their amazing work on this.



We’d like feedback on levels, the default distance from which players hear each other (though server admins have control over this) and general usability/bugs. In future we will look into the VOIP system allowing you to broadcast your voice through Turbo’s in-game radios, and maybe record as well.

Something else we’d like to do is have lower speech volumes when players are on different floors in the same building and, although it’s quite a way down an already hefty priority list, one day have a more sophisticated sound propagation model to deal with indoor-to-outdoor sound levels and large obstacles/walls that block hearing. For now though, it’ll be as-is with finetuning – although General Arcade are currently working on giving Admins the ability to talk between themselves, which will be added into a future 35 Build.


Community Translations of all 4500 lines of current radio and TV content are now in-game for Russian, Turkish, German, Spanish, French and Polish (which we forgot to mention last week – sorry Geras!).

 




As of the latest beta build MP Factions are now a part of the game. Press Escape to access the user panel, add a tag of up to four letters, choose a colour and all of a sudden you’ll be a part of your very own survivor gang –  with it being your decision as to whether you reveal your allegiance to the players you meet, or not.

This system also disables melee PvP between group members, which you can also turn off should you need to turn on your friends or the recently infected. Overall control over how Factions work, meanwhile, is governed by the Admins – who can govern how many players can form a group, and how many days must pass before they are given the option.


Next up RJ will turn his attention to clearing the backlog of 35-specific bugs that have built-up in the Bug Tracker. In the background, of course, is still the much-anticipated (much delayed) work on our new animations/combat/etc  system that remains ongoing. We’re still filling in something of a crevasse the opened up when on the final approach, but we will get there.

As such, once RJ has chewed through bugs in the current IWBUMS build, we’ll make a judgement call on whether to release it to the public. It’s already got a fair wedge of new stuff (new map, VOIP, metalwork, finalized food system, jumbo trees, multi-stage building, sleeping revamp, item disassembly, composting, tools to make life as an MP Admin easier, lots of UI and Inventory tweaks and tons of community requested changes etc). The more we add at this point, the higher the bug mountain from the wider public player-base. So we’ll be seeing how it goes over the coming week.

This week’s crazy landscaping from the formidable MesCaLin, who’s also responsible for mannequin chess and this overall Prisoner-esque abode. The Block of Italicised Text would like to direct your attention to the PZ Wiki should you feel like editing or amending something, and the  PZ Mailing List that can send blogs like this and patch notes direct to your mailbox. We also live on Twitter right here! Our Discord is now open for chat and hijinks too. A general overview of the content of PZ builds past, in testing and upcoming  can now be found here.

We have just released a new update to our public IWBUMS beta channel (details of how to access found here) with some cool new stuff. The build is 35.21, and the primary items it contains run as follows:

 



Rosewood now has a player spawn option, meaning that you can check out the prison, courthouse and the like without a hike. The military residential area of March Point meanwhile, placed between Muld and Rosewood, can currently only be reached on foot. (This might change depending on the feedback we get from this test build.)

As a part of this update there are various fixes to the map in the previous version, more applicable loot to be found in new buildings like the fire station, expanded foraging zones and also an updated ‘zombie spawn’ map that looks a little like this. Bottom right you’ll see the existing Muld zombie spawn, then to the lift is March Ridge and up at the top is Rosewood. The brighter the white, the heavier the zed presence.



We especially need feedback on difficulty in terms of the heightened zombie numbers for these areas, and of course any and all map bugs to be reported in the PZ bug tracker. We are aware that Rosewood has been spelt ‘Roosewood’ in the spawn selection screen. This will be addressed in an upcoming build, and has resulted in a Frenchman apologising profusely through the medium of Skype emoticon.



This feature allows you to talk to your co-op friends and survivors you meet on MP servers. It’s not a general overall PZ chat channel, but instead allows survivors to communicate when they’re in ‘audible’ distance from each other on the map itself. We’re hoping that it will add some great new dynamics to the game when played with friends, and enemies.

To enable this venture into the options menu, then choose whether you want the system to broadcast when it automatically hears your dulcet tones – or through the press of a button (default: alt). Our thanks to General Arcade for all their amazing work on this.



We’d like feedback on levels, the default distance from which players hear each other (though server admins have control over this) and general usability/bugs. In future we will look into the VOIP system allowing you to broadcast your voice through Turbo’s in-game radios, and maybe record as well.

Something else we’d like to do is have lower speech volumes when players are on different floors in the same building and, although it’s quite a way down an already hefty priority list, one day have a more sophisticated sound propagation model to deal with indoor-to-outdoor sound levels and large obstacles/walls that block hearing. For now though, it’ll be as-is with finetuning – although General Arcade are currently working on giving Admins the ability to talk between themselves, which will be added into a future 35 Build.


Community Translations of all 4500 lines of current radio and TV content are now in-game for Russian, Turkish, German, Spanish, French and Polish (which we forgot to mention last week – sorry Geras!).

 




As of the latest beta build MP Factions are now a part of the game. Press Escape to access the user panel, add a tag of up to four letters, choose a colour and all of a sudden you’ll be a part of your very own survivor gang –  with it being your decision as to whether you reveal your allegiance to the players you meet, or not.

This system also disables melee PvP between group members, which you can also turn off should you need to turn on your friends or the recently infected. Overall control over how Factions work, meanwhile, is governed by the Admins – who can govern how many players can form a group, and how many days must pass before they are given the option.


Next up RJ will turn his attention to clearing the backlog of 35-specific bugs that have built-up in the Bug Tracker. In the background, of course, is still the much-anticipated (much delayed) work on our new animations/combat/etc  system that remains ongoing. We’re still filling in something of a crevasse the opened up when on the final approach, but we will get there.

As such, once RJ has chewed through bugs in the current IWBUMS build, we’ll make a judgement call on whether to release it to the public. It’s already got a fair wedge of new stuff (new map, VOIP, metalwork, finalized food system, jumbo trees, multi-stage building, sleeping revamp, item disassembly, composting, tools to make life as an MP Admin easier, lots of UI and Inventory tweaks and tons of community requested changes etc). The more we add at this point, the higher the bug mountain from the wider public player-base. So we’ll be seeing how it goes over the coming week.

This week’s crazy landscaping from the formidable MesCaLin, who’s also responsible for mannequin chess and this overall Prisoner-esque abode. The Block of Italicised Text would like to direct your attention to the PZ Wiki should you feel like editing or amending something, and the  PZ Mailing List that can send blogs like this and patch notes direct to your mailbox. We also live on Twitter right here! Our Discord is now open for chat and hijinks too. A general overview of the content of PZ builds past, in testing and upcoming  can now be found here.